Yesterday @jan and I tested “Lang Lang’s Musical Journey” Alexa Skill, and instead of investigating the various merits of this amazing Skill here, I’d love to discuss the broader issue of how celebrities and influencers can use voice apps to promote their personal brand.
Of course this topic is related to the very broad question of how brands in general can reach and provide value to their audience, but I think it’s enough of a special case to deserve an own thread.
Let’s start by looking which value some great celebrity-based voice apps provide, and then see what we can induce from there.
Lang Lang’s Musical Journey by UMG
If you’ve seen the #TestingTuesday episode, you know what it’s about and in how far it’s great. These are the highlights:
- The influencer ‘personally’ interacts with the user by welcoming them to the Skill and helping them navigate the Skill
- The user gets to consume the main content of the artist, in this case Lang Lang’s piano music
- The user gets a lot of valuable bonus content: The artist’s thoughts about the piece, tips on how to play it on the piano, and background info of the piece itself (Personally, I think this is where this Skill absolutely dominates!)
- The content is regularly updated, in this case every week
Frag den Forster by Amazon Music DE
@jan and I regularly mention this one in #TestingTuesday, and I couldn’t find an equivalent US example. So, what the Skill does is to simulate an interview of single-turn questions and answers, where famous German musician Mark Forster answers the questions and Alexa is the moderator (“What else do you want to ask Mark?”). The Skill has some weaknesses that become apparent in the reviews, e.g. you have to be very precise with your question and it’s exact wording, otherwise you’ll get a fallback message (“I’d rather not answer that one.”) - But this is the flip side of the Skill actually providing a huge amount of content (this official artist page on Amazon actually contains a cheat sheet of all the questions you can ask).
So, what’s great about this Skill:
- The user can get a feeling of actual interaction with the artist
- The user gets in-depth bonus content (the questions are super-specific, like “Do you use Tinder?” or “Which sound are you most afraid of?”)
- The user is encouraged to visit the artist’s page to find more questions to ask
Voice First Champion by Mark Tucker via Witlingo
This is the Skill of @marktucker, an influencer and celebrity of the voice community (and this forum in particular! ). The Skill directly provides pieces of recorded content from Mark without much navigation, but after each piece you can either upvote it or listen to the next one. The Skill actually comes with a flash briefing that distributes the same content.
Both of these Skills were produced using Castlingo by Witlingo, a platform that allows artists to record content directly with their mobile phone and to upload it into the Skill, which allows for a very authentic and spontaneous experience.
So, what’s great about this Skill:
- The user can consume bonus content that was exclusively produced for this channel
- The user can explore the archive of previously recorded content
- The platform makes it easy to create particulary spontaneous and authentic content
Bublé Daily by Michael Bublé
Michael Bublé is a well-known singer, songwriter, actor and record producer (Thanks Google!), and with this Skill you can get personal quotes from him on various topics, apparently. There’s only one (relatively short) piece of content per day, which severly limits the user’s degree of exploration and engagement, so let’s summarize what’s good about this fact Skill and move on:
- The user can access bonus content produced exclusively (?) for this channel, with new content every day
Sowing Seed Flash Briefing by Matt Miller
I don’t know Matt Miller and would be interested to know of you do, but as a matter of fact he provides one of the top-rated Flash Briefings in the US Skill store. The Flash Briefing is actually an interface for his podcast of the same name, and every day you get a random (?) episode in your daily update.
As a voice app, this is not deeply impressive, but here’s what I think of as its most notable feature:
- The user has an easy way to integrate the consumption of the influencer’s main content into their daily routine
So, after having investigated these great voice apps, what do you think are the particularly relevant features for a voice app through which artists want to connect to their audience? Which examples of great voice apps are you aware of, and what do you like about them?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!